Kalon Studios sustainable nursery furniture
The first time I was introduced to a Kalon Studio product was during a visit to the store The Little Seed in Los Angeles. They just received the Bamboo IoLine Crib and I had to oooh and ahh at the beautiful piece of work. Not only was it friendly to the eye with its modern features and beautiful wood tones, it was made of sustainable bamboo and sealed with non-toxic oil. My favorite part of the crib was the partial flap on the side, thereby not making it a dangerous drop side crib, but offering flexibility for shorter people or making it changing table accessible. It retails for $1,400 and has the option of changing into a toddler bed.
I could not get my mind off of that piece of furnture and had to contact Kalon Studios to talk to them about their philosophy on their business. I was so excited when owners/founders/designers Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen agreed to answer a few questions. Below are a few of their well thought out responses.
What motivated you to start this company?
“We started this company when I became pregnant with our daughter. We couldn’t find any cribs that met our criteria (design-oriented, modern, sustainable, people-friendly) and so we decided to make our own. While we were at it we made several pieces of furniture for ourselves and the response to them was so good that we decided to participate in a trade-show. Again, we got a great response. Next thing we knew, we had started a company.
At the same time, we were struggling with the basic economic and lifestyle choices that come with starting a family. Neither one of us wanted to miss out on being at home with our daughter. We decided we’d try to see if we could make a business work where we could both work from home – where we could share the responsibilities of both the business and the family. So far, we’ve succeeded.
When we started there just weren’t any companies out there doing what we were interested in: contemporary, modern, high-quality, sustainable design. I think maybe there were two that we could find. If we were going to go through the trouble of starting a company, we wanted to push ourselves to go beyond just making great design pieces but to create a company that was politically consistent with our ideals, one that we could be proud of. At the time, most people claimed that being ’sustainable’ didn’t mix with business and we wanted to see if that was true. I definitely agree that if we’d let go of certain criteria that we could have gotten on our feet stronger and faster but a lot of our struggles were the standard struggles that any start up would have gone through, and mostly they had to do with starting a company without capital or investment. In the end, so far, we’ve been able to do everything just how we wanted. Though there are a lot of new companies in our market now, I still haven’t seen any that meet all the criteria we do – basically, though we’re small and unknown to many, I still think we’re unique and respected. I’m proud of that.”
What is your mission statement?
“Design for a Sustainable Culture. This is actually our slogan, but it really comes to the heart of everything that we are trying to do. If there are different approaches to creating changes in how society runs its course, then the first, I believe, should start with yourself. For us, this means actively supporting those people, businesses, ideas and things that stimulate the type of culture we are interested in and not supporting those that we feel are detrimental to our vision of the world. I know that this is very loose, but it is our guiding principal and the starting point for every decision we make both privately and in business.”
What was your working background before manufacturing children/baby furniture?
“I studied Industrial design at the Rhode Island School of design and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam and worked as a freelance product designer until Michaele got pregnant. Over the years, Michaele had been urging me to venture out on my own to start a line. Only once we were expecting our first child did I begin thinking of doing it, partly because of the financial pressure and also because it was more condusive to our particular lifestyle choices.
I had never thought that I would design any children’s products. Over the years, though my background was in theory and writing, I’ve worked more and more with design. I worked for several years with the design community and design festivals in Berlin. Recently, I got my MFA in Los Angeles.”
What is your favorite product out of your line of products?
“Always the latest one – right now, that’s our Isometric Table.”
Where is the furniture manufactured?
“Until recently, we were making the pieces ourselves in our garage in Los Angeles. As our orders grew we hired on some of our friends who were highly skilled sculptors, fresh out of art school. At the middle of last year, we moved our production to New England to the former furniture manufacturing capital of America. We’ve temporarily moved East with the company and have been setting up all the various parts of the business in that area – everything from material sources, boxing and shipping, to label printers. It’s important to us that we’re investing back in domestic production. We know that its possible to get great quality craftsmanship for far lower prices in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, however the price you pay is you sacrifice the craftsmen we have here in the United States. At its height the town where we now manufacture had over 5,000 highly skilled furniture makers and they were world renowned. Now there are less than 300. The last large furniture manufacturer in the town closed its doors in the summer of 2008. Recognizing and making use of the talent there, helping to sustain the craft and hopefully rebuild it, is enormously important to us.”
Do any standard crib sheets and crib mattresses fit the bamboo crib, changing table, toddler bed?
“Yes, our entire IoLine collection works with standard sized mattresses, changing pads, and sheets.”
What other woods are used other than bamboo? Are the woods FSC certified?
“Currently, only our dresser uses a wood other than bamboo. For this piece, we use FSC Certified Multi-Ply. We’re pretty strict, maybe too strict, about all of the materials we use. Johann’s an amazing researcher and is in touch with scientists and manufacturers from around the world who are on the cutting edge of the ‘green’ manufacturing movement. We’re always using the best of what’s currently out there – unless we still think it doesn’t make the cut, in which case we wait for something better. The drawback here is that this has definitely slowed the release of new products. For instance, there’s one product we’ve wanted to release for years now, but can’t find a people/eco friendly replacement for fiberglass. There are a lot of great new eco-friendly raw materials we wish we could already be using but for the size of our business or the size of theirs, we’re just not there yet. But there are amazing advancements being made and you can be sure that we’ll be integrating them as soon as they’re available.
We plan to introduce our table and several other products in a selection of FSC Certified woods. We are also trying to use only woods forested locally in the Northeast.”
What would you like the end customers to know about your company and your philosophy on the environment?
“Sustainability is really what we are about. Although we do care about the environment and our company is “green”, it is only one of many things under what we feel is necessary to think about when thinking about sustainability. We have always found that equitable business practices and fair trade are much more important than being green. Though, it hasn’t kept us from people and eco friendly.”
Any other comments you would like us to know about you personally and your company?
“We love what we do, love creating new products, and love seeing peoples and business’s practices change and evolve in a direction that we agree with.”
